“What then? Are we any better off? Not at all! For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin, as it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of my boys is working on a project for school right now in which he has to write a research paper and create a presentation about a mythical character. Specifically, he has to write about one of the Greek gods. This was very exciting for me to learn because I greatly enjoyed reading all the various stories about Greek gods and heroes. As far as figures to look up to for how you should be doing life, they were all awful, but in terms of sheer entertainment value, they were great. I think that is part of what has made this particular set of myths so enduring. This is the last Friday before we officially enter into the season of Advent. With that in mind, and to get us ready for where we are going to go starting this Monday, I want to take just a minute today to talk about one of the most enduring myths in our culture today. Let’s talk today about the myth of the good person.

You’ve probably said it before. I know I have. We hear it all the time, especially at funerals today. “He’s a really good person.” “She’s just a good person.” We say that to express our moral and cultural appreciation, respect, and approval for another person. One of the foundational assumptions of our culture today is that all people are basically good people. Our youngest is in a play with the local high school’s drama department that premiers this evening. It should be a great show and the cast has all worked really hard to get it ready. But one of the lines in the play expresses a belief that everyone has at least some good in them. All they need is a little help to bring it to the surface where everyone else can see and experience it.

We want to believe – we have to believe – that everyone is redeemable. This doesn’t mean they are redeemable by another person (say, for instance, Jesus), but rather that they are redeemable by their own actions. All of us have it within us to become the better person we always wanted to be. We just have to dig a little deeper and try a little harder. There is goodness in all of us just waiting to be let out. Sometimes we need a little help, but if we just look inside and follow our heart, everything will turn out okay in the end.

And then a bunch of vicious, Hamas terrorists murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians in cold blood. They brutalized women and children. They wantonly murdered babies. They took hundreds captive as well including children who were made to watch videos of their countrymen being violently slaughtered over and over again. And in response to all of this around the world, but especially on college campuses in the United States, there arose a series of mass protest movements loudly chanting their support for…Hamas.

Wait, what now? They were chanting their support for the murderous terrorists who willingly murdered babies while they slept? And I would be willing to bet a fairly large sum of money that a great majority of these people cheering for the people who were on the same side as the Nazis (you know, the one group of people everybody uses as the ultimate measuring stick for evil), with some of them even going so far as to call those innocents who were murdered the equivalent of Nazis, would quickly confess to a belief that all of us are basically good people at heart.

What is wrong with us?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with us: we’re all broken and warped by sin. The idea that everyone is basically good at heart is a myth. It’s a lie. It’s a convenient and comforting lie, but it is a lie. That’s actually way more generous of a description than it deserves. It is an insidious and dangerous lie devised by the Enemy himself to keep us from embracing the Gospel. If we are all basically good people at heart, then we don’t need anyone to save us. We only need to look inside ourselves and follow our heart. Everything we need to make our situations better is right inside of us. Yet the insistence of the Gospel that actually saves us is that we need saving. We don’t have what it takes on our own to make ourselves right with God or anyone else. We are utterly hopeless and lost in our sin. No one has a leg up on anyone else in this mess. We are all in it together. All of us are in need of a Savior.

If there is one thing worth getting rid of as we prepare for this Advent season, it is this cultural lie. If you want to be able to celebrate the coming of Christ into the world and into our lives for all that it is worth, you need to be in the right frame of mind. The more you are willing to think of yourself and those around you as possessing a basic goodness on your own, the less interested you are going to be in receiving Jesus on His own terms. And the thing is: He will only be received on His own terms. If we try to take Him on any other terms, we won’t be able to do it. We may claim an association, but Jesus Himself said there are going to be a lot of people in the end who claim an association with Him but who He never knew because they were unwilling to take Him on His own terms.

Here are His terms: You are totally depraved in your sin and wholly separated from God and the life that is truly life. Everything you do reeks of sin and sin provides the controlling narrative for your life. Whatever “goodness” you manage to produce will always carry the taint of sin in it. You have no place before God and cannot reach Him on your own no matter how hard you try. Your best works are like filthy rags before His perfect holiness. The harder and longer you struggle apart from Him to make yourself good enough for His kingdom, the more entangled in death your life will become. And in the end, the only thing you will be fit for is Hell.

When you understand that to the fullest extent you are able, you will be ready for Jesus. How is that? Come back Monday and find out the good news.